Wellbot is a chat bot feature that helps users understand their benefits and how to utilize them. Partnering with Watson AI technology by IBM, clients can receive the best information for their specific conversation. The AI aggregates information gathered from five health insurance carriers, flexible spending accounts and retirement programs. Employees are able to access a single, engaging and user-friendly experience that provides personalized insights and on-demand guidance on health and wellness via the web and mobile app.
Overview
Project: Concierge Chatbot
Scope: Help users understand and utilize their benefits by using a chatbot conversational style
My role: UX Designer | UI Designer
Stakeholders: Concierge team, IBM Watson team, UX Design team, development, and product managers
Challenges: How do we help users understand their benefits and receive the help they need?
Basic process: Requirements gathering > Design/Copy > User Testing > UI Design > Collaborate and Co-Design with Development
The Status Quo
Health benefits can be hard to navigate and understand. But for both the sake of the consumer, doctors’ offices and health insurance companies, the savings can be immense. Average consumers don’t understand the costs of going out of network, or not utilizing their benefits in the best way possible. I know I was guilty of this when got my first full-time job out of college and was shocked to get a massive bill weeks later.
This results in frustrated consumers when they receive their unexpectedly high bill and powerless doctors’ offices who often bear the brunt of the confusion. In a survey of more than 6,500 customers, at least 1-in-5 of those who received medical care saw an out-of-network doctor. On average, these people spent nearly $900 more on their care than those who paid out of pocket for care from network doctors.
On top of that, support call cost an average of 1$/minute/person. If you do the math, 1,000 customer calls, which last five minutes each, will cost $5,000. If you carry that further, that’s a pretty sizable chunk of money that could be used in much better ways.
The solution was Wellbot, a concierge-type app that could be added into the Welltok (acquired by Virgin) platform to better explain benefits. Wellbot helps to inform users of their benefits specific to their life situation and also surfaces programs that help them manage their health.
The mobile integration.
In addition to this, we added opportunities for feedback, easy suggestions with pre-defined answers and a choose-your-own-adventure type of conversation.
Giving feedback was easy and contextual based on the question.
Mobile App Integration
Wellbot's expression changed with responses to give the user feedback on their questions. This connects the user with the narrative and keeps them interested to discover the smaller details.
This is how Wellbot would function as a stand-alone feature within the Welltok app.
The app experience had to:
Connect users to programs
Be unobtrusive but a key point of contact for help
Provide feedback and guidance
Check out this interactive prototype to get a better feel for the conversational interface:
Iterating
The chatbot widget is persistent across all pages and helps users navigate the site to find detailed information they might need that the chatbot doesn't offer. Giving the opportunity for feedback provides more in-depth information about the accuracy of the answers and it lets users know that their opinion matters.
There were many use cases that needed to be accounted for. From giving the user the opportunity to give immediate feedback on each question, to how multiple-button responses would work; each use-case needed to be fleshed out before development.
Overall, the revamped designs and additional context that was added increased usability and was well-received by clients and users. The usage of the hand-holding links sky-rocketed and nearly tripled click through rates in just a month's time.